maclypse’s Techdirt Comments

While many raise a good point that spotify probably doesn't belong on a secure system - that's not the amusing part, nor even the point.

The amusing part, and indeed the point, is the RIAA (p2p enemy number one) saying the following about a p2p system:

"These services are safe and secure, and assuring access to them not only respects the contractual relationship users may have with these services, but also achieves an important public policy goal of promoting legal, safe digital providers,"

This makes it kind of problematic to continue claiming that p2p is the end of the world and the devil incarnate. It just doesn't add up.

Re:

Beginning to look like it's time to shut down everything Google in all of France, make sure the public knows why it's happening, and wait for the public outrage to be aimed at the ISPs and the newspapers.

Yet more demands that search engines stop searching. Again, it's a matter of convenience: instead of going after the person that actually commits a crime (and in this case I use the term loosely), you blame the search engines for finding it.

It may be easier to blame google for finding "illegal" images or copyrighted material than it is to blame the people posting it on the internet in the first place, but this doesn't make it right to blame google - just convenient.

Of course this also leads to the next question: how is google or any other search engine supposed to know what material to block? Manually review every piece of content the engine finds, and manually compare it to every ruling from every court in the entire world, as well as every copyrightholder in the world? That sounds impossible. DMCA-like takedown notices then? Surely no one would abuse that...

Isn't it time to stop blaming search engines for everyone elses fuckups?

Re:

Think of it like this:

Option a: Games are the problem! Movies are the problem! Whatever is the problem! This is about blaming things, and it's EASY.

Option b: People, society and politics are the problem. This requires critical self-reflection. This requires politicians and indeed the population to shoulder the blame. This requires you to accept that maybe, just maybe, YOU are a part of the problem. This is HARD, and for politicians it's probably also career suicide.

Re: Well, once again

Try "Kerbal Space Program". In development but very playable, very popular, teaching you all kinds of interesting things about the laws of physics. It's fascinating to see people discuss whether or not "the Oberth effect" is big enough to make a gravitational slingshot viable around a small celestial body such as the moon.

Just because the big studios focus on "action blockbusters" doesn't mean everything is like that. There's a lot of really good, and very ususual games out there, but most studios cater to the lowest common denominator and make shooters "because that's what people want" and to a large extent they are right. This isn't much different from the movie industry in that respect.

Now and then, an independent developer makes everyone go "Huh!?" by doing something completely outside the box and being massively successful. Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program are good examples of games that don't involve guntoting massacres. Sometimes even the big shooter-studios do that: remember "Portal"?

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Indeed.

Just look at how fucking perfect the last generation came out... they are no strangers to murder, rape, sexism, hate, or war. In fact they are doing their best to eliminate all civil rights. Clearly something to strive for. We should al be like them.

WTO, UN, Geneva convention... pick an international forum, document or agreement and it's the same thing all over, and it's not exactly a new thing:

"Our way or the highway."

Even when vetod in the UN, the US still gathered its laughable coalition of the willing and went to war. Everyone has to do what the US says, and the US doesn't have to do anything that anyone says. Old news.

I'm just waiting for someone, somewhere to grow a pair and say "With all due respect, mr President, I think we'll try the highway." Preferably they should record said conversation, threats and all, and release it to the media at the same time.

Honestly, the US owes everyone money, produces little to nothing of anything, and keeps shooting in all directions. If just HALF of the world's nations set up trade blockades against the US, the country would be in the stone ages within months. I don't understand why countries keep obeying a country that's quickly becoming morally, legally and financially bankrupt.

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I was thinking the same thing, but then I realised: we are not thinking like the maffia: "If Martin Luther King speaking to the public is automatically public domain, how can we argue that music or anything else performed at a public event isn't?"

Anyone that argues that King's speech should be in the public domain, will have to face off against the every copyright group in the US who will desperately defend their ability to protect their own copyrighted material. We already know they will fight tooth and nail to avoid ANY exception to copyright, even at the expense of the deaf. I very much doubt they will act any different to this "exception".

I got a question: how long is the US citizens going to tolerate secret laws, secret procedures, secret interpretations of laws, and secret applications of all of the above - before the americans actually vote for "none of the above" and find a third party?

The libertarians is starting to look pretty damn good about now, aren't they? At least they are neither democrats nor republicans and it'll send a message.

So basically, governments are no longer satisfied with backdoors into the cellphone networks and backdoors through encryptions, but now they actually want the legal right to hack citizens' computers without even an accusation of a crime? Sure. That won't end up abused.

I' ve often wondered about this "jurisdictional issue", being a swedish citizen. We do have some pretty extensive rights (still, despite best efforts to have them removed), which includes making private copies of anything we buy - in any format we want. We even have the right to, for example, decompile our copy of windows, change the source code and then recompile it, to suit our personal needs.

What happens when I bring my laptop through customs in the US? Will I be charged with copyright infringement, and hacking? Does the act of bringing your perfectly legal laptop with perfectly legal content with you on a vacation to the US suddenly amount to criminal activity punishable by several years in prison and outrageous fines, because the US doesn't approve of swedish consumer law?

"It makes you wonder: are the US systems for copyright, patents and trademarks actually envied anywhere around the world, except, perhaps, by lawyers who might profit off them?"

Oh sure! We love the systems in the US! Just look at how us Europeans embraced the increased protections and more american way ACTA was giving us!

Sure, admittedly the politicians were all for it (until the shit hit really the fan and no politician dared touch it with a ten foot pole. Even De Gucht slipped silently into the night in the end), but the public wasn't exactly thrilled...

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Well, if you create a botnet, you are in fact hacking hundreds of machines belonging to blissfully unaware civilians. This is illegal, and always has been. I haven't seen anyone argue that this should be legal.